Grow Your Law Firm · 2026-10-30 · 30 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
34 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Eric Morgan and host Ken Hardison explore why many law firms fail to achieve returns on their marketing investments despite intelligent practitioners. The core issue: most firms try to compete head-to-head with national and regional competitors by targeting everyone, resulting in generic messaging and inefficient spend. Morgan advocates for a strategic alternative: identify your ideal client by analyzing your best-performing and most-enjoyed cases from the past two years, then build operations, marketing, and culture around that specific persona. Real examples illustrate the power of this approach - Ken's success with playground accident cases, motorcycle injury cases, and RSD (reflex sympathetic dystrophy) worker's compensation cases; Morgan's acquaintance who became a massive tow truck specialist firm before a PE buyout. The discipline extends to internal operations: once you specialize, you develop repeatable processes that improve efficiency and profitability. Modern marketing demands this focus; you cannot effectively compete on all channels (social, SEO, billboards, TV, AI) as a generalist. Instead, Morgan recommends audience sizing - determining how many people matching your ideal profile exist in your target market, then building a predictable marketing model around conversion rates and case value. The conversation challenges the persistent search for marketing silver bullets and emphasizes that growth requires methodical risk-taking, strategic discipline, and deep expertise in a defined market segment.
Hosted by Ken Hardison. The show scores 55.5/100 on substance across its analysed episodes. See the full show profile.
Review your past two years of cases, identify your top 20% income producers, and note which types of cases generated the best outcomes and which ones you genuinely enjoyed handling. Then conduct exercises to understand what got you excited, what cases are memorable, and what client profiles align with your vision for the practice.
National firms reach broad audiences with generic messaging, but this creates an opportunity for niche firms: within that massive target audience are countless sub-segments with specific needs. By identifying and speaking directly to one segment, a smaller firm can become the known expert in that narrow market rather than competing on budget.
You develop repeatable processes and frameworks for handling those specific cases, which means new attorneys can follow established steps instead of reinventing approaches each time. This increases productivity, efficiency, and profitability while building a strong firm culture around a clear identity.
Conduct audience sizing to determine how many people matching your ideal profile exist in your target market, then model your marketing spend against expected website traffic, phone calls, conversion rates, and average case value to forecast results and optimize the business case.
The competitive landscape has become too complex; you cannot check all boxes across web, SEO, AI, social media, billboards, and TV while trying to appeal to everyone. Success now requires methodical, focused strategies targeting a specific audience rather than expecting quick fixes from any single tactic.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode offers a handful of practical ideas around niche specialisation, operational repeatability, and audience sizing, but most of the runtime is filled with meandering anecdotes and generic business platitudes like 'riches in niches,' 'silver bullet,' and 'analysis paralysis.' Very little would genuinely surprise a seasoned B2B operator.
you cannot check all these boxes with web and SEO and AI, uh, and social and billboards and tv, and you cannot check all of those boxes from a marketing campaign
from an operational standpoint, if you have a ton of playground accidents or playground injuries or cases, you start coming up with a process and a framework on how you handle those cases
The episode recycles familiar frameworks - niche down, know your ideal client, imposter syndrome, no silver bullets - without adding a fresh angle or contrarian argument. The brief point about AI search favouring specialists is underdeveloped and doesn't move beyond surface observation.
there's riches and niches or niches or whatever you want to call it
It just doesn't exist, honestly anymore, you know, to your point, you can't just throw an ad up there like you used to
Eric Morgan is a relevant practitioner running a legal-focused ad agency, which gives him genuine domain experience, but he functions largely as a supportive sounding board rather than a practitioner who has personally scaled a law firm. His contributions rarely go beyond general agency-level marketing advice.
We're not pursuing banks, we're not pursuing car dealerships. That's just now we've got our niche. We focus on legal, we focus on two other categories
pick my brain anytime. Love chatting about it
Most of the concrete specifics come from the host - $100k wasted on a NC knee-replacement campaign, $250k net income in 1995, a $500k loan, motorcycle and daycare niches - while the guest offers only a vague tow-truck-company-sold-to-PE anecdote and unnamed client examples with no hard metrics.
he went out and spent a hundred thousand dollars on trying to get these recalled knee, hip, whatever hip replacements...And got zero
This is in like 95. I was making probably net and a quarter million, which is not bad in a town of 10,000
The host frequently overtakes the conversation with his own extended personal stories and asks leading, confirmatory questions rather than probing the guest's thinking. Eric is rarely challenged and mostly agrees and restates what Ken has just said, producing a mutual-validation dynamic rather than a generative interview.
Yeah man. So we were talking before we started this podcast
Good stuff, man. Good stuff
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Welcome to episode 355 of Grow Your Law Firm , hosted by Ken Hardison. In this episode, Ken welcomes back Eric Morgan, President & CEO of Roux Advertising. Eric shares why law firms competing against larger, better-funded firms need to get more intentional about exactly who they are trying to reach instead of attempting to market to everyone. The conversation focuses on identifying the clients and case types a firm genuinely wants, building a niche around those opportunities, and developing marketing that speaks directly to that audience. Eric explains how specialization can make a firm more memorable, improve marketing efficiency, create repeatable operational processes, and position attorneys as the go-to experts in a particular area. Ken and Eric also discuss AI search, audience sizing, calculated risk, and why execution matters more than searching for the next marketing silver bullet. What you'll learn in this episode: 1. Why Marketing to Everyone Is Getting Harder - Why smaller firms cannot compete by simply copying the spending of dominant market players - How narrowing your audience can make marketing more efficient and relevant 2.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Foreign. Law Firm Podcast brought to you by Pillmont. This podcast helps lead lawyers to more growth, profit and freedom. Here is your legal marketing expert and host, Ken Hardison.
Speaker B: Well, hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Grow youw Law Firm. And today we have back Eric Morkin with Rue Advertising. How you doing today Eric?
Speaker C: I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. I love having conversations with you.
Speaker B: Yeah man. So we were talking before we started this podcast. So we're going to talk about a couple of things today and one thing I want to ask you, we're going to talk about is lawyers spend a load of money on marketing and uh, but sometimes they don't market to the right person. And let me give you an example of this. This is something, this is a true story that happened in North Carolina. I had this friend that was doing a lot of mass torch and he had this device, uh, I guess call it a knee replacement or whatever the hardware and it was, they had a recall on it and so he went out and spent a hundred thousand dollars on trying to get these recalled knee, hip, whatever hip replacements, I can't remember exactly. And got zero. And the reason he did is they didn't use them in North Carolina.
Speaker C: Oh, oh wow.
Speaker B: And uh, that's. Somebody
Speaker C: didn't do their homework on that one.
Speaker B: Yeah, that's a true story. That probably 20 years ago. Okay, but that's a true story. And so, but that's kind of like the worst case. But I mean I think sometimes all businesses, but lawyers in particular, they just think okay, I won't wreck cases, I won't wreck cases. So I just want to market to everybody because we never know when they're going to get direct. But I think there's a lot more to it and I want to get your thoughts on it about even if you get the right message and sometimes the message goes to who you try to market to. Like who do you want? I mean who is your best client? Who is your uh, ideal client?
Speaker C: Yeah. You know it's interesting because I've talked about this a few times and how so much of this is so tied together in terms of who you're talking to, how are you talking to them? What are you going to say? And so uh, know leads up to what your strategy is, what your positioning is and so forth. And oftentimes you know, look, you've got the 800 pound gorillas in these markets and, and you've got a lot of people that are just, I'll call it yelling and screaming. I don't mean that in a negative way, but I mean that more enough. Uh, they're everywhere. They're on billboards and TV and social and they're buying radio and, and so forth. And they're talking to everybody with, you know, a fairly generic, straightforward message. And then you've got other firms that are trying to carve their niche, trying to carve into that marketplace, and they look at that 800 pound gorilla and go, yeah, I want to be there, but I just can't afford it. And my position is, all right, well, yes, correct, you can't afford it. You know, let's figure out exactly who your audience is because that 800 pound gorilla is talking to everybody in the market. And you know, a great strategy, one that's more defined would be, let's talk to a very specific group of people. Because in that 800, you know, 800 gorillas target, there is, uh, countless audience demographics and psychographics and traits and personalities and, and Personas and so forth. And so one thing to do is to start looking at, you know, your current client base, your previous client base. Look at who you are. What type of clientele do you enjoy working with? You know, is it families, is it single parents, is it sing, no kids, severe injuries, medically complicated injuries, and start carving out these, I'll uh, call them silos, but these silos of Personas. Because you might have some people that fit a certain personality or profile and they need to be spoken to, they need to be communicated with in a certain way. Then you might have somebody else completely on a different spectrum that needs to be talk to a certain way. They want more communication and they want to know what's going on. They want to know every corner that needs to be turned. Everything that needs to be dealt with. Where some audiences, they don't want to know that, they just want to know, do your job, lawyer, get the work done and let me know when, when this thing's going to be settled.
Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it's, it's true because I, uh, specifically knew back when I was on TV that speed and greed, I mean the agencies call it that, speed and greed. You know, I can get you a check and I get it fast. And that appealed to a lot of people. I did not like those clients, to be honest with you, uh, because they were hard to please and expected a lottery ticket every time. So I'd never talked that way. I talked about what's right, justice, you know, get protecting your family. And it got me the kind of clients I wanted and I probably missed some clients too, and I still got some greedy ones too. But, but the deal was I uh, specifically didn't run certain types of ads that I knew could work.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker B: That's. It won't those type of clients because they were paying the ass.
Speaker C: And look, that's your prerogative and that's great that you have the ability to make those decisions that I, and I encourage you to under, you know, I encourage everybody to understand those realities that look, I enjoy working with this kind of client, but I don't enjoy working with that kind of client. And even if you were to look at the speed and greed. Yes, but then when you peel back that layer and look at the speed and greed client, there's still gonna be some nuances about those people that they want speed and greed, but they also want their handheld. They also wanna know what's going on. They also wanna be talked to in a certain way, supported certain way. And so there's multiple aspects of speed and greed. But look, if you just don't like that personality and that, and you feel like, you know, you went to law school to do certain things and that's not the style you work in. Beautiful. Fantastic. And so that gives you. That uh, steers your approach and that steers your communication style. So that way you can attract the people that you do want to work with and those things, it steers how you can answer the phone, how are you going to interact with these clienteles, the kind of cases that you want, the kind of referrals that you want. So understanding that is paramount because nobody wants to go to an office every day and deal with customers or clients, no matter what industry, deal with customers and clients that you, you just don't enjoy working with. I mean that's a dead end job.
Speaker B: Yeah, well that's kind of where I looked at it. Yeah. But I, I think. Would you agree that this uh, is. We're kind of tallying off of this. But as I see more and more of these, this national money coming in and these Morgans and these regional firms and, and you get, like you said, the more and more are shouting. I mean it's getting the airways and everywhere. I had a real wise guy man told me one time there's riches and niches or niches or whatever you want to call it. But uh, I'm thinking more and more that the ones that are going to survive all this are going to get. They don't have just one niche, but they have two or three niches. Like they might Go after a certain type of injury, or they might go after a certain type of. Like a dog bite case is not a car wreck. A slip and fall is not a car wreck. A, um, swimming pool accident. You know, even when I was doing it, I really went after playground accidents. And then I went after daycares because nobody was doing that. And I could get ranked very high on digital, and there was nobody running commercials on it. And did I get a load of cases? No, but they were good cases because most time they involved kids. And in North Carolina, we had this contributory negligence. But if you were up, uh, if you were a kid, like, I can't remember the age, like under 13, there was no Katrina, but in 13, 18, it was comparable to somebody with your knowledge and IQ or whatever. But it made it easier to prosecute those cases on my end. And I felt like I was doing something good. You know what I'm saying? But I'm just thinking more and more, there's so many niches out there that. That lawyers could go after.
Speaker C: The beauty of that thought process is that it's repeatable. Meaning you're talking playgrounds, you're talking slip and falls, you're talking those kinds of things, or even certain types of mva. One, the more you do and the more you get known about that, uh, or known for that type of case, you become the expert. Okay, great. Starts positioning you. But from an operational standpoint, if you have a ton of playground accidents or playground injuries or cases, you start coming up with a process and a framework on how you handle those cases. So then it becomes a repeatable process, steps where you can bring in new attorneys and have them follow the steps that they need to go through so you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. And so from an operational standpoint, that's great because you become more productive, more efficient on how you handle those cases. You know exactly what to do, and all of a sudden you became expert. So, you know, people are coming after you. People are. You're known for it. And then you got this repeatable business model. That's it. That's, you know, the holy grail of what running a business is all about. And we have to remember that at the end of the day, you might have a law degree hanging on your wall, but you're actually a business owner running a business.
Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. It's like, see, a lot of lawyers go after trucking cases. That's really very competitive. Um, I went after motorcycle cases and worked that whole. And the thing I Liked about that, Eric, was you didn't have to wait till the wreck happened. You start working it and get into the groups. You know, they got all their big community. If you can get in that community and be,
Speaker C: oh, it's a. Things like motorcycles. A tight niche community.
Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you know, and I was very successful with it.
Speaker C: Look, I got a very good high school friend and they different industry, but their specialty was working with tow trucks. And they were known as the tow truck people. And that niche made them a massive company. And typical story of the day, PE came in and bought them out and they cashed in. But, uh, being focused and being, you know, having that niche, it makes you an expert, you know, but then also from an operational standpoint, it allows you to tackle each of these, you know, these cases in a repeatable way. That helps from an efficiency standpoint, which then ultimately impacts your bottom line and your net income. When you have this niche, then all of a sudden back to the original topic of audiences. You know exactly who that audience is, you know, what their concerns are, you know what their hot buttons are, you know, how they want to be spoken to, how much communication they want, how often they want to be communicated to, you know, you know, your intake team, people answering your phones, how they want to be spoken to. All of a sudden it's second nature and it drives your culture around your business. And so when somebody comes through the door, not only are the expert, somebody comes in the front door, a client comes in the door, you handle that case, you know, it, it runs its course. Then everybody leave. You know, your client leaves after nine months, 12 months, whatever. And they walk away going, oh my God, now I understand why they're the experts. That was an amazing experience. Because it's a repeatable. Okay. You go into things like hotels, national chains of hotels. You understand what the experience is going to be about. It's all about that.
Speaker B: Yeah. And, uh, you could do like the injuries. The only one I did on injuries really was, well, our workers comp. We really got good at these RSD cases back 25 years ago when nobody, everybody thought it was fraud, you know, and there's serious injuries at work injuries. You know, we put a lot of stuff on the website when people were searching, you know, the doctors wouldn't, you know, we knew we had doctors that we could see them to and that could explain it to judges and things. And it worked out, uh, good for us. We got a lot. And those cases were very lucrative. I mean. Cause people usually couldn't go back to work
Speaker C: and think about this. You mentioned putting stuff on the website. If you're talking to very specific group of people as your niche, your website is incredibly focused and it's very detailed for that group of people. But you're not trying to speak to the masses. You're not trying to speak to. To millions of people. Because I'm going after everybody and I'm going to be a generalist and go any handle any kind of case that complicates things, that makes marketing, you know, internal operations a lot more complex, that is a lot more expensive because you're trying to appease everybody and you're trying to be a master of everything. And the old saying is master of everything. What is it? Um, you're master of everything. That means you're a jack of all trades kind of a thing. You master none of that's the problem.
Speaker B: And I think with the new search, with AI, uh, I think this is going to be more important because I think if you've got a niche, you're going to have these verdicts, you're going to have these settlements, you're going to have all your content in there. You're going to have, you know, if you got a book, you got this. And AI is going to be looking at this stuff, says, well, Ken Harson, you know, he's written a book on it, he's got this kind of verdicts. Uh, he's written, you know, he's spoken at these events, trial lawyers, events on this subject. Like you said, you become the expert. And I think people are going to be. I think that's the way search is going to be in the future. I think it's this hitting RSD lawyer and you get a list of eight lawyers. No, I think you're going to get one or two. And they're going to be talking to you back and forth like you were. Like you were talking to an operator. Hey, operator, help a concierge, help me find a RSD lawyer or help me find a motorcycle injury. And then they're going to go, look,
Speaker C: uh, you know, think about your own personal situation here. If you have a toothache, you have an issue with your heart, you have an issue with your, you know, your shoulder. You don't go to a generalist, right? You end up going to a professional that specializes in shoulder surgery. You go to a cardiologist. You know, it's the nature of how we do everything else. So,
Speaker B: yeah, I mean, you know, look at us. I could have been for all lawyers, but I decided to Niche PI, uh, injury law. Because I knew that the best and I felt like, you know, I didn't try to be everything to everybody.
Speaker C: Yeah,
Speaker B: look at you. I mean, you're targeting lawyers and I think you got another side. Um, I mean, you got two businesses, but basically you've niched out. I mean, you know, it's a general. I mean, I guess you would do it, but you're not advertising that. You're a general agency.
Speaker C: We're not pursuing banks, we're not pursuing car dealerships. That's just now we've got our niche. We focus on legal, we focus on two other categories. And I have another division that does healthcare and tourism and hospitality. But yet we're not generalists. We stay very focused. And when you do that from a law firm standpoint, you start really defining who your audience is. You start being incredibly focused. To your point earlier, you didn't want to take the speed and greed. There are things that you don't want to do, things that you really love doing, and that's what makes the job so exciting. And so, you know, you're so happy to get out of bed in the morning and can't wait to get to the office. Because I love doing what I'm doing. I'm speaking to the people that I want to do, I want to work with. I'm helping them, you know, get their lives back on track. I'm helping them with the legal representation that they deserve. And I do it very, very specific group of people. I'm exceptionally good at it and I become known for it. And that's kind of that situation that you want. And then you can speak to them constantly. You speak to them in social media. You have very specific profile of who you want to work with.
Speaker B: Yeah, I tell lawyers sometimes they go back and look the last two years at your top 20% of income producing cases and see what kind of cases they were and then see which ones you really, you really like that you enjoy doing that type of case or you enjoyed that kind of. I could tell you a lot about yourself and what your future hold if you want.
Speaker C: We go through some exercises like that with clients. We did one not too long ago and it's really kind of drumming up the past of like, what got you excited, why are you doing this? What are the things that you love doing? Tell me the most memorable stories. And from that we start seeing this picture again. Things start falling into place of why they're doing this, you know, what it means to them, what it means to the People that they end up working with, you know, what gets them motivated. And so we can then build a whole profile of audiences. Build a profile of, you know, what is. When we have that audience profile, we can then go into a market like a Chicago in Atlanta or Louisville or somewhere and say, those people that you enjoy working with, they look like this and they're in Louisville, and this is how many people there are. Now here's a marketing campaign that allows us to talk to just those people that you love working with. And then you can start predicting it, going, here's the number of people that, that we believe we can get on your website. Here's the number of people we believe we can make a phone call, uh, get a phone call out of. There's a number of people. Then once they call, what's your conversion rate? How many people can you sign to a case? So all of a sudden it becomes predictable, but it's all around a group of people that you love. You're not walking into Louisville going, let's talk to everybody and see what we catch. It's not that. It's. Let's talk to a very specific group of people that we enjoy helping, that we love working with, that we actually envisioned when we went through law school, that we thought we were going to help these kinds of people. Great, let's paint that picture. And then let's figure out, we call it audience sizing, how many there are in the market. And then let's build the model off of that and then say, great, we're converting this number of them. You're becoming known as the expert. Let's turn it on a little bit more. And can we build a business out of that? In terms of we're putting this in from a marketing standpoint. This is the number of people we're getting out of it in terms of cases, this is the case value. Does that model work for you? And they go, yes, great.
Speaker B: Well, I think more and more large men start thinking about this a lot more seriously, because the days are just throwing ad up and getting, you know, and everybody's going to start picking up phones over with. I mean,
Speaker C: it's gone. It's gone. It's a, uh, very competitive industry. Arguably one of the most, if not the most competitive industry. You know, there's so much information out there. There's so many ways to communicate with people. You cannot check all these boxes with web and SEO and AI, uh, and social and billboards and tv, and you cannot check all of those boxes from a marketing campaign. Against everybody in the market and be a generalist because it's a losing battle. You will not be able to build a very efficient, very productive, you know, very profitable business model out of it. Instead, you've got to be somewhat focused on who you want to talk to. How are you going to communicate with them, what are you going to say once you get in front of them? And so that way, when they are injured, you know, and I said this at, at Pilma a couple of weeks ago, it's like when somebody's injured, are they going to think about your firm first period? That is all that matters, you over everybody else. That's what you're trying to accomplish. Because at that moment when they need to make a decision, you want to own that moment, you want to win that mom, you know, and so if you're the expert, they want to go to you. I mean, you see it, you know, on a daily basis. God forbid somebody's injured, got, somebody got cancer. People like, oh, you need to go to the expert, you need to go that person. You know, it's that, how do we replicate it? That's the goal. Replicating that situation in the legal world.
Speaker B: Good stuff, man. Good stuff. Uh, well, I want to finish up maybe two or three minutes with, uh, we were talking before we got started here today and uh, you were talking about, you know, we were just at the summit and everything. And the lawyers that go to that, I mean, they want to learn or they wouldn't be there. But still, you know, and I had other people ask me, is what, you know, all these lawyers went to law school, they're all intelligent. Why are some so much more successful than others? You know what I'm saying? And success is what you brand it will say. Why are some so much bigger? How are some much more money? How are some making a lot of money but yet working 30 hour weeks? And some are working 100 hour weeks and
Speaker C: yeah,
Speaker B: miserable and some are happy. And I think it's got a lot to do with mindset. But the deal is, I think it's got a lot to do with two things. And you talked about it. One of them, people are looking for silver bullet. And what do you say about a silver bullet, Eric?
Speaker C: It just doesn't exist, honestly anymore, you know, to your point, you know, you can't just throw an ad up there like you used to 30 years ago, 20 years ago, and the phone starts ringing. It just doesn't exist. You have to put the work into it. Look, just like the attorneys have to put the work into it for their clients. You know, they have to go through the deposition, they have to do discovery, they have to, you know, go back and forth with the opposing attorneys, counsel, um, insurance companies, all that. There's no more silver bullets. You know, it's a long process. And I feel like nowadays everybody's looking for the quick fix. And in every industry, in every part of life,
Speaker B: uh, oh, yeah,
Speaker C: unfortunately, I think there's a lot of questions. It's a. Look, marketing's overwhelming, hands down. And it's getting more complicated, you know, by the day, you know, and the du jour is AI. So I get it. You know, I ask. People just ask us a lot of questions. And look, I've always said it, pick my brain. You know, somebody picked my brain months ago and I told them, do X, Y and Z. And they did, and save them a bunch of money. Great. But ask questions because they are apprehensive. Some of them are. It's a challenge because they want to grow and they want to get their niche. But there's a level of risk, and I get it. You know, you're running a business, I'm running a business, you're running a business. There's a level of risk out there, and they're apprehensive, and that's common. But you got to take risks to grow a little bit. But you can do it in a very methodical way. Ask a lot of questions, you know, dig into what makes this project or this marketing campaign or that marketing tactic or strategy better than others. So that way you can reduce the risk. And, uh, I talked about predictions, I talked about audience size. We talked about, you know, finding the right audiences and niching. All that helps reduce the risk. I mean, you can, to a certain level, you know, predict what's going to happen. You know, you're going to talk to. You're going to use marketing to talk to a bunch of people. How many people of those are going to, you know, raise their hand or click on an ad and say, I want to talk to you more. You know, I want to be in. I want to have, uh, a free consultation, you know, with a lot. So there's a way to minimize the risk. It's just some people are, you know, it's just we're all different. And look, I got levels of risk apprehension. But, you know, at the same time, every now and then, you got to put your foot on the gas. And we've got a. We got a client who's been with us forever, and they saw that spark. They put their foot on the gas and they go, got it. Something's going on. We got a client that's doing everything. Tv, radios, billboards, search, social, you name it. And they're looking at it as a look, let's do a bunch of things, let's test it. But we know the rising tide's gonna lift all the boats, so they're playing around with different things. And year over year, they keep chipping away at it. You know, they're taking some risks, they're testing some things, but everything's moving in the right direction.
Speaker B: Yeah, I think you got to. I mean, you know, everybody thought I was crazy when I, uh, left the firm. I was doing. I was making good money. I mean, that's probably. This is in like 95. I was making probably net and a quarter million, which is not bad in a town of 10,000. Right?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: And I threw it all well. And went and borrowed a half million dollars, took everything I had and put it. Because you couldn't borrow, but, like, you can't. Had to go to the bank and put up real estate. Sign my firstborn away and went for it. And, uh, my family, my wife was scared to death that we were going to go bankrupt. Da, da, da. And maybe we almost did because I didn't know what I was doing to start with. But we got through it. But the deal is you got to take calculated risk. You know, it's like what happened to me back then was I start seeing the TV was coming on and more and more lawyers going on tv, and my business was starting to go. It was leveling, and it started going down about 3%, which is always been up 10, 20 every year. And I looked at it and I said, this is the problem. And, uh, I said, you know, I don't really like tv. I don't really like marketing, but you gotta pivot. And this is where it's at. And I gotta. You know, like you said, I'm running a business. I mean, I can sit there and about it like all the other lawyers in my town, or I can do something about it. And I decided to do something about it. But the deal is, you gotta take action. And that's where I think the biggest problem is. You got some lawyers that have this. I call it analysis paralysis, where they just sit there and overthink something to death.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: And then you've got ones that are scared, fearful that they're going to lose money because it might not work. And it might not work.
Speaker C: It might not.
Speaker B: But the Deal is you can, you can regroup very quickly and pivot. I mean, if you've got somebody helping you that knows what they're doing. And then the last thing is, I really think. And a lot of it, some people are fearful of success and this is getting deep, but I think sometimes some people think they don't deserve it. I don't know.
Speaker C: Yeah, you know, it's. It's in a lot of business owner circles, you get things like the imposter syndrome, where they're like, this isn't me. I don't know what to do. I think, uh, you know, this is all gonna fall down on me. And that one, that's common, but 2, 99% of the time it's wrong. Look, like you said, they graduated law school, you know, they passed the bar, they're intelligent people, and so they have the ability to do it. And you got a great team. You bring together, you know, a great group of individuals, and you gotta build a great community. So they know they have access to some good minds when it comes to marketing, when it comes to growth, when it comes to running their business, finance and software and marketing and all these things out there, I think they just need to break out of their shell and go, you know what? I'm gonna do this. Set some goals. Look, we're about to change from one quarter quarter two to quarter three. Set some goals. Go. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to try one new thing next quarter. You know, I'm going to implement one new thing that's going to help me grow my business. And we see a lot of clients like that. We have a lot of conversations about what are we going to do next quarter, what are we going to test, what do we want to get out of it, you know, what we're going to predict, what we see the return to be. But, uh, you know, they just have to take that leap of faith in this day and age. It's methodical. You know, there's a method to it. There's a lot of research behind it. So you can predict what's going to happen in a pretty good degree of certainty. But yeah, it's just a, uh, sometimes they get in their own way. And we see this a lot for every, every industry. They think about it and they have the vision, but execution is really everything, you know,
Speaker B: it is, it is. I agree. I agree with you. You have the best ideas in the world, but if you don't execute, they're just patriots.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: You know, they're just patterns. Well, listen, thank you so much. Anybody wants to get up with you, I know you, you always, you love to talk and help people. Eric, uh, how, uh, can they get up with you?
Speaker C: Yeah, pick my brain anytime. Love chatting about it. All the social media platforms. Eric Morgan. Uh, RU Advertising, R O U X Advertising, LinkedIn. You can email me ericadvertising.com or just go to our website, ruadvertising.com.
Speaker B: yeah, and I left to leave a challenge to everybody that's listening or watching this. Do what Eric said next quarter, pick one thing. If you don't know what to pick, you either need to talk to Eric or you need to join Pillman. Because I've got a hundred ideas of things that you can do. I've got them in our vault. I mean, you know, and we've got a list serve out there. I mean we got everything to help people. I mean,
Speaker C: look, as I did for somebody, not even a client, they picked my brain months ago. You know, they told me what their situation is. I made a recommendation, I said stop doing one thing. And they did. And it, it one. It didn't impact anything negatively too. It saved them a bunch of money. So call me, you know, give me your situation. I'll, uh, do a quick analysis and then I'll say, look, here's what I would do if I were you. And free of charge, just pick my brain. Happy to.
Speaker B: All right, thank you, Eric. Hopefully. I hope you have a good rest of the year. I'll see you soon, I'm sure.
Speaker C: You bet. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Speaker B: Until next time, this is Ken Hardison. Dedicated your success.
Speaker A: You have been listening to the Grow youw Law Firm podcast. The podcast that leads lawyers to more growth, profit and freedom. Go to growyourlawfirm.com to find more ways to market and manage your law firm. Please leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts.
